







A 


LECTURE 

ON 

ECUMENICAL COUNCILS 


DELIVERED IN 


ST. PAUL’S CHURCH, TROY, N. Y. 


ON 


CHRISTMAS EYE 


BY 

THE REV. THOMAS W. COIT, D.D., LL.D., 

RECTOR. 



HARTFORD: 

PUBLISHED BY THE CHURCH PRESS COMPANY. 
1870. 


4--^BX 

/ 7 23 


« 


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 
M. H. MALLORY & CO., 

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for 
the District of Connecticut. 


» 



CHURCH PRESS CO., PRINTERS, 
HARTFORD, CONN. 


OTICE. 


On Christmas Eye, I have for many years been in 

% 

the habit of taking up topics sowewhat aside from 
the usual routine. This year, I was particularly re- 
quested to make Ecumenical Councils my subject. 
The learned will be good enough to remember that I 
had to address a promiscuous audience, few of whom, 
probably, were familiar with the topic on which I 
was desired to dwell ; so if they find some things 
said which they may deem unnecessary, and others 
left unsaid which they expected to hear about, I hope 
they will excuse me. 


“Then pleased it the Apostles and Elders, with the whole 
Church.” — Acts, xv. 22. 

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the founda- 
tion of the Apostles and Frophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
head corner-stone; Grant us so to be joined together in unity of 
spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple ac- 
ceptable unto thee. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


ECUMENICAL COUNCILS. 


Having been asked, in reference to the very interest- 
ing attitude of Christian affairs, to take for my present 
disquisition the subject of Ecumenical Councils, and de- 
siring always to avail myself of such hints from par- 
ishioners and my brethren of the clergy, it will now be 
my endeavor to comply with the wishes expressed to me. 
Let me beg my hearers to remember, that I am to treat 
my subject, if I mean to instruct, in a didactic way, and 
not in the more fashionable but less useful way of a sen- 
sational oration. 

Ecumenical is a word derived from the Greek tongue, 
in which the nojin ecu-me-ne (if I may spell it in English), 
signifies the household of men, or the habitable globe. 
Hence the adjective ecumenical is employed to mark 
something, which belongs to mankind generally. Ap- 
plied to the household of Christian men, or the habitable 
globe occupied by Christians, it means much the same 
thing as the continually misapplied, perverted, and 
abused word, Catholic.* 

* Episcopalians say in church, before God, that they believe in 


6 . 


It differs from the word encyclic , as belonging to an as- 
sembly of individuals, calling themselves a Catholic or 
General Council, or assuming the prerogatives of such a 
Council, and not to such a Council’s documents. An 
encyclic (you can easily perceive its origin) is an en- 
circling or widely comprehensive document, conveying 
the wishes, intentions, or directions of a largely influen- 
tial personage, or assembly. We might call it a gen- 
eral circular. When it is issued by the Governor of a 
State, or by the President of our Republic, we call it a 
proclamation. 

Councils are political, sometimes, as well as ecclesias- 
tical. For example : some are familiar with the word 
Council, as a part of the government of the State of New 
York, and as still composing a part of the government of 
the State of Massachusetts. Of course, it is with coun- 
cils ecclesiastical, and not with councils political, that I 
am now to deal ; and it may spontaneously and right 
away be asked, in the minds of some of my .hearers, What 
had early Christianity to do with Councils ? and, Where 
did it get the hint, or derive the precedent, for such con- 

the Holy Catholic Church. Ask nine in ten of them, when they 
come out of doors, if they are Catholics. Oh no ; they are Protest- 
ants ! Why will they any longer belie themselves, and give away a 
word which they appropriate in a solemn creed ? 


7 


gresses or conventions ? And my answer is, Councils 
were nothing new to the early representatives and pro- 
fessors of our religion. No less than seven important 
gatherings, which may be called councils, were held un- 
der the Jewish Dispensation — the first under Joshua, in 
the times of the Theocracy, and the last under Hyrcanus 
II., about sixty-five years before Christ ; thus showing 
that they pervaded the whole of ancient Jewish his- 
tory * 

From such an exhibition it appears, not natural only, 
but almost inevitable, that similar predicaments should 
draw together Christian Councils, as soon as the exigen- 
cies of Christianity rendered such assemblies necessary. 
And one was necessary, immediately after our Lord’s as- 
cension. The idea was not entertained a moment, that 
the first and most prominent office of the Christian min- 
istry was a slight and temporary matter. By no means. 
If it were, such a place as that of Judas would never 
have been filled again. It would have been forsaken, as 
his own wretched carcass was upon its suicidal gibbet, 
whence it tumbled down, a mass of putrefacton, and 

* See Grier’s Epitome of the Councils, pp. 1-3. This is a valuable 
manual, of which the late Dr. Hawks entertained a high opinion. 
It is worth reprinting, with notes adapting it to the times. It was 
issued at Dublin, in 1828. 


8 


burst asunder. But so far was the Apostolic and Episco- 
pal office from falling into discredit, by tlie occupancy of 
a traitor, tliat it was avowed to be a matter, not of ex- 
pediency and propriety, but of absolute necessity, that it 
should be refilled without delay. The pronunciamento 
of St. Peter, under our Lord’s express injunctions — given 
during his sojourn of forty days on earth, after his resur- 
rection — was in the following terms , “ Of these men, 
who have companied with us,” “ must one be ordained 
to be a witness with us of his resurrection ?” Must is the 
word, not may. And, too, to be a witness for the whole 
system in which the resurrection is a culminating and 
crowning fact — the resurrection being put here, by syn- 
ecdoche, for all the great facts of Christianity; just as, 
by the same figure of speech, faith, the first of the Chris- 
tian virtues, and baptism, the first of the Christian sacra- 
ments, are put in our Lord’s last and most comprehen- 
sive commission, for all that is “ generally necessary ” 
in inward and outward religion* To suppose the Apos- 
tles were intended to be special witnesses of the resur- 
rection, as a single and isolated fact (as some imagine, 

* Synecdoche is a word that means to put things in one, which 
might otherwise he separate. It expresses much in a little. The 
phrase “generally necessary” is quoted from the Catechism. I 
suppose it means the same as universally, i. e., for all. 


9 


who suppose their office temporary), is a most unfortu- 
nate mistake ; since women were witnesses of this fact 
before them, and more than five hundred persons after 
them, at a single opportunity (I. Cor. xv. 6). 

A Council, then, was held for the continuation and per- 
petuation of the Christian apostolate ; or of an episco- 
pate, or superintendency, extending beyond a single con- 
gregation. 

Another Council was held for an inauguration of a new 
office in the ministry, the diaconate ; and though we are 
not told so expressly (any more than we are when the 
order of presbyters or elders had its origin), for the inau- 
guration of deaconesses, as well as deacons. I venture 
on this suggestion as not an overbold one, since one of 
the early deaconesses is alluded to by name in the Epis- 
tle to the Romans, and was honored with a commission 
which would now not be too small for a metropolitan or 
a pope. Phebe, the deaconess, was the actual bearer of 
St. Paul’s longest and grandest Epistle to a Church 
which was soon esteemed, on account of its position in 
the Roman Empire, as the most dignified one in Chris- 
tendom.* 

* Phebe was a deaconess of the Church at Cenchrea, which was 
the port of Corinth. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans at Cor- 
2 


10 


Another Council was held in a.d. 46, in the then cen- 
tre of Christendom, for the determination of a question 
which was convulsing Christendom, viz., How far are 
Gentiles hound to keep the precepts of the Mosaic Econ- 
omy ? The details of this Council’s sittings are given 
us in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles ; 
and among those details, permit me to say in passing, 
nothing is plainer than that the President and Chief of 
that Council was pot St. Peter, hut St. James, “ the 
Lord’s brother,” the first Bishop of Jerusalem. James 
was at home — was on his own throne — and said, with a 
papal supremacy, “ Wherefore my sentence is.” If Peter 
had uttered that potential annunciation, we should have 
had changes rung upon it, louder than could he pealed 
from that bell of all bells, which lies silent in the Krem- 
lin at Moscow. 

So you see, that before we leave the Bible — or the 
times of the Bible — no less than ten important Councils 
(seven Jewish and three Christian) rise to meet our view, 
and demand our curious and devout consideration. And 

inth. And the Church at Corinth had as good a right to trump 
high as the Church of Rome. St. Paul and St. Peter together con- 
secrated Dyonisius its first Bishop (Eusebius, Bk. II. chap. 25). 
The date of the Council of Jerusalem (a.d. 46) is Dr. Burton’s. 
Others have it 51. 


11 


if we do not find them very soon after the Canon of Scrip- 
ture was concluded, very good reasons can be given for the 
apparent discontinuance of bodies of such consequence. 

The first three centuries of the Christian Era were 
centuries in which Christianity passed through a grand 
and almost exhausting struggle for continuous exist- 
ence, for, as one might say (speaking as a Churchman), 
her apostolic succession.* The powers that he, the 
world at large, were confederate against her. The kings 
of the earth stood up, and the rulers took counsel to- 
gether against the Lord and against His anointed, accord- 
ing to the forewarnings of prophecy. Persecution after 
persecution rained the hailstones and firecoals of malig- 
nity upon her ; and finally, in the hottest persecution 
and the last, rained them upon the buildings and docu- 
ments, as well as upon the living representatives of the 
Religion ; when it seemed as if the very name of Chris- 

* “Apostolic succession ” is a phrase which many quarrel with 
who know nothing of its consequence. There is an apostolic suc- 
cession to Christianity itself, or its historical continuity is lost. 
There is an apostolic succession to the Canon of Scripture, or that 
is lost too. There is an apostolic succession for the doctrine of 
the Trinity, or the Unitarians are right. For Infant Baptism, or 
the Baptists are right. For visible sacraments, or the Quakers are 
right. And so on. People who quarrel with apostolic successions 
know not what they do. 


12 


tianity was to be bunted and bounded from tbe ecu-me- 
ne, or habitable globe. (Eusebius. Bk. viii., cbap. 2.) 

Sucb a season was not one for calm, deliberate bodies 
like Councils, taking advice for tbe ecumenical welfare 
of Christianity, and providing for its progress and exten- 
sion. Certainly not. And accordingly for three hun- 
dred years we find Councils (if we find them at all) local, 
partial, and circumstantial. But when the last hurri- 
cane of passion and hatred had spent its fury, and Chris- 
tianity could look around her with the supervision of a 
statesman, the condition of affairs was radically altered. 
Particularly was this the case after the famous edict of 
toleration, by a Roman Emperor, in a.d. 313. Then at 
length Christianity was able to rear her head among the 
superstitious and the cruel, who had striven to prostrate 
her in the dust, and ask for rights as a constituted inde- 
pendency. 

Accordingly, in the year 325 (twelve years after the so- 
called edict of Milan in Lombardy), we are brought into 
contact with what is styled her first general or world- 
wide gathering, i.e., her first and ever most memorable 
Ecumenical Council. It was assembled in Nice, one of 
the capitals of Bythinia, in Northwestern Asia Minor 
(now called Izneek), but a few miles south of Nicomedia 
(now called Izmeed), the Eastern home at the time of the 


13 


Roman Emperors, and not very distant from the capital 
of the Roman Empire, as afterward established, viz., the 
city of Constantinople — a city with a name as undying 
and as inexhaustible, as the boasted eternal city in the 
middle of Italy. 

It was the Council there assembled, which drew up 
the main portion of that formulary still called the 
Nicene Creed, and which we repeat occasionally — not as 
often perhaps as we should do — in the services of the 
Church we call our own. 

The function which this Council assumed, in drawing 
up that instrument, was unquestionably its most impor- 
tant one ; and must, at the proper moment, receive our 
special consideration. At present, I am most concerned 
to tell you, that in calling itself an Ecumenical Council, 
or a grand synod for universal Christendom, it did so, 
because it represented all Christendom ; in other words, 
the entire Holy Catholic Church. As a consequence, 
this Council was not a self-originated or a self-constituted 
body, but a representative body ; called together in the 
name, and by the consent, of Christendom at large. Evi- 
dently, most evidently, all Christendom could only be 
represented by itself — could only be summoned and gath- 
ered by its own consent, and could be bound by no acts 

which itself did not originate and sanction. A council, par- 
3 


14 


tial as to its extension, constrained as to its deliberations, 
hampered in its action, crippled and beleaguered as to 
its issues, may be a council, but it is no Ecumenical 
Council. It does not represent the voice, the will, or the 
freedom of Christendom ; and, as such, cannot bind 
Christendom by any of its pronunciations. 

These things seem almost or quite self-evident ; and 
yet no one, but a student of ecclesiastical history, and 
especially of that part of it which respects dogmas or 
theological opinions, can by any possibility appreciate 
the immense, and immensely solemn importance, of hav- 
ing an Ecumenical Council genuine, i. e., of having it 
truly representative and truly free. For if it is not a 
representation of the whole Church, it cannot speak with 
the authority of the whole Church ; and if it be not free, 
it cannot speak the voice of the whole Church, as a voice 
spontaneous, accountable, guiding, and directive. 

So to have an Ecumenical Council a representation, 
and a free representation of the Church Catholic, has 
been considered, from time immemorial, a qualification 
perfectly indispensable ; particularly has this been the 
casein the East. For as one of our consuls, who has 
lived in the East, most correctly observed, lately, in the 
New York Times , “ The Greek Church preserves the 
municipal character and freedom of thought, by which 


15 


it lias always been distinguished from that of Rome, and 
which it borrows from the republican character of the 
people, in the days when it was planted there [in the 
East] by the Apostles.”* And now to show you, how 
the indispensable qualification alluded to, has been pro- 
vided for, I must speak somewhat of the geography of 
the Church, in the days when Ecumenical Councils be- 
gan their formal existence, and were provided for in a 
formal way. 

The Church Catholic, notwithstanding its sufferings by 
persecution, had so extended and multiplied itself, that 
its primitive unity became incompatible with a single 
centre, (as when the Council of Jerusalem was sum- 
moned), and its centres had also to be multiplied. The 
principal, though not the only, centre for the West was 
Rome ; because Rome was the elder capital of the Roman 
Empire, and could communicate with, and send messages 
unto, the outskirts of the Empire, in Central and Western 
Europe, more readily and rapidly than any such centre 
in Asia and in Africa. Wherefore, Rome became a Patri- 
archate ; and very easily and very naturally, the first of 
the Patriarchates into which Christendom was primari- 
ly divided. A Patriarchate was wanted also in Africa— 


* New York Times , Dec. 6, 1869, 


16 


then covered with bishoprics, which since have disap- 
peared — and this was placed at Alexandria. And as Al- 
exandria, the old capital of the Ptolemies, and a radiant 
point for philosophy, literature and the arts, was then the 
second city of the Roman Empire, the Bishop of Alexan- 
dria became the second Patriarch of ancient Christendom. 
A Patriarch was also wanted for Asia, as well as for 
Africa and the West, and he was fixed at Antioch, on 
the Orontes, the old capital of the Syrian monarchs, once 
so eminent and towering in Oriental history. The Rom- 
anists will have it, that Antioch was primarily the see 
of Peter, and thus the first of Christian Patriarchates. 
If it were, it seems profoundly singular, that “ the shad- 
ow of Peter passing by ” should not have consecrated it 
to a higher destiny. It soon became the lowest of the 
Patriarchates; while the exaltation of a Patriarchate, 
altogether new, and having no ecclesiastical recom- 
mendation, put it a grade lower in the grand list final. 
There could not be a clearer demonstration, that these 
Patriarchates (all of them — Rome’s as well as all the 
rest), grew out of reasons of expediency, and not out of 
provisions in the New Testament, or the logic of dog- 
matic theology. 

With the three Patriarchates, of Rome, Alexandria, 
and Antioch, the subject of Patriarchates had a long and 


17 


uninterrupted rest. The West had its peculiar and prop- 
er head. The South had such a head, and the East had 
such a head ; and this was all Christendom needed or 
demanded, for many a long day. The “ ancient customs ” 
about such things were recognized and honored by the 
Council of Nice, in one of its canonical enactments. But, 
by and by, the grandest empire of the world required sub- 
section as well as the so-called Kingdom of Heaven — i. e., 
the domain on earth of a celestial king. The unwieldy 
Roman Empire wanted a new capital ; and, in A.D. 330, 
Constantine the Great founded for such a purpose, the 
city which has existed, and through the direst vicissi- 
tudes has come down to our own then far distant and 
most problematic times. The name of Constantinople — 
the city of Constantine — is as familiar to you as that of 
Rome — the city of Romulus. Still, it was originally a 
political name, and not a Christian one. Yet, as soon 
as it became formally, what an old fashion called it, New 
Rome, or the capital of the Bas Empire, or Lower Em- 
pire, second to nothing on earth, but the great Empire 
of the West — -just as soon, almost, the question was agi- 
tated, whether Constaninople should not rank as high in 
the Church as it did in political distinction and in govern- 
mental sovereignty. This question came up for discus- 
sion and decision in the second Council Ecumenical, 

4 


18 


which sat in a.d., 381. It was determined in favor of 
Constantinople, and in spite of all remonstrances and men- 
aces of old Rome, or, as we should now say. Papal Rome 
— remonstrances and menaces which never gave way 
hut with the grimmest grace and the most puckered on- 
look, for more than eight hundred years. When Con- 
stantinople, during the times of the Crusades, became 
temporarily subject to Western influences — a fief of 
Western autocracy — then, at last, it was discovered and 
conceded that the Patriarch of Constantinople might be 
second to none but his brother Patriarch, who nestled 
among the seven hills, so notorious in Italian history and 
the annals of the Church* 

Nor was this the end of the ancient system of the Pa- 
triarchates. When Christianity spread easterly and 
southeasterly, into Mesopotamia and Arabia (places 
which had some converts to grow from even on the day 
of Pentecost), then a fifth Patriarchate was established, 
which took the name of the Mother Church of Christian- 
ity, and its first centre and point of radiation, the nucleus 
of Jewish antiquity, the city Jerusalem. This Patriarch- 

* Constantinople was subjected to the Latins in 1204, and redeem- 
ed by the Greeks in 1261. In 1215, at the fourth Lateran Council, In- 
nocent III. confirmed the rank of Constantinople.— Neale’s Intro- 
duction to his History of the Holy Eastern Ch., p. 29. 


19 


ate was established by the Ecumenical Council of Chal- 
cedon (a town about opposite to Constantinople, across 
the straits), which sat in a.d. 451, and which developed 
and carried out the system inaugurated in a.d. 381 — 
the date of the Council which first gave Constantinople 
a rank, to which its age (but half a century) did not en- 
title it, but which was thought accordant with its civil 
and political elevation.* 

Nothing is plainer, from these and parallel facts, 
which I have not time even to mention, than that the 
rank of ancient dignified Christian ecclesiastics was reg- 
ulated, not by ecclesiastical position, but by the civil and 
political importance of the sees they occupied. In fact, 
the Ecumenical Council of 451 did not hesitate to declare, 
in just so many words, that Constantinople ought “ to be 
magnified in ecclesiastical matters, even like the elder 
imperial Rome, as being next to it.” If “ ecclesiastical 
matters” had had their proper preponderance, Jerusalem 
would have been the first, and not the last of the Patri- 
archates ; and a French Abbe was so fully persuaded of 
this, that he wrote a pamphlet to induce Pius IX. to 

* Justinian tried to establish a sixth Patriarchate, but did not 
succeed. All shows that Patriarchates grew out of the times and 
not out of Divine appointment, like grades in the ministry.— Ro- 
bertson’s Ch. Hist., first ed., pp. 500, 501, vol. I. 


20 


make Jerusalem his home — a pamphlet which reached 
its second edition thirteen years ago 1* 

I may seem to have spent too much time, in showing 
how the ancient patriarchal system of the Church Catho- 
lic was constituted ; hut you will now perceive, how I 
can make my observations practical. 

The establishment of the Patriarchal system brought 
on with it (perhaps necessarily, in connection with the 
fact that an Ecumenical Council should represent all 
Christendom), the practice of consulting the five great 
heads of Christendom, and obtaining their consent, be- 
fore an Ecumenical Council could be summoned. This 
practice grew naturally into a custom, which, like mul- 
titudes of unwritten laws, became as authoritative as 
laws recorded in a statute-book. And now we begin to 
approach a point, which becomes intensely interesting, 
and very momentous, in relation to the so-called Ecu- 
menical Council, at present in session, in the city of Rome, 
under the auspices of Pius IX., the acknowledged head 
of that which is properly called the Roman Church — 

* La Papaute a Jerusalem. Par L’Abbe J. H. Michon, Paris, 
1856. — The original, for the quotation just before, may be found in 
Routh’s Opuscula, II., 69. 


21 


it is so styled in tlie creed of his predecessor, Pius IV. — 
but which is not the Church Catholic, or universal.* 

It is as easy as intuition to see, that with five chief 
heads, instead of one, primitive Christendom was a re- 
public, and not a monarchy, with one solitary individual 
as not its head merely, but its autocrat, its irresponsible 
sovereign. Such, doubtless, is the favorite theory of 
ultramontane Romish theologians ;f and it was with this 

* The idea of calling the Latin Church by its strictly proper name, 
“ Roman,” has been followed by some of the most zealous devotees 
of the (so-called) Holy See. Thus, the Spaniards presume to insert 
it into a Catholic Creed — the Apostles’. See Meyrick’s Ch. of 
Spain. London, 1851, p. 172. On p. 167, in a note, Mr. Meyrick 
says, “ The evils exhibited in these Letters do not, for the most 
part, belong to Spain as Spain, but to Roman Catholic countries as 
such.” On p. 172, he notices that the Apostles’ Creed has been 
altered in two particulars. Meyrick’s is an invaluable book. 

+U1 tramontane and cismontane are, as to Romanism, much the 
same words, as high-church and low-church among ourselves. Two 
sides exist everywhere. The ancient Jews had their Pharisees and 
Sadducees. The later Jews their Gaons and Sebureans, i.e., con- 
servatives and radicals. The Congregationalists have their ortho- 
dox and their liberal. The Presbyterians their Old School and 
their New School. The Baptists, their hard-shell and their soft- 
shell. The Methodists, their silent and their noisy. The Quakers, 
their orthodox and their Hicksites. u A smart free-thinker,” as 
Alex. Pope said, cau be “all things in an hour.” While alluding 
to high-church and low-church, I beg to give an answer about them, 
which may help the younger clergy. A rector was once asked 
about them, by a lady, while a sharp-eyed warden was looking on, 


22 


theory that Luther and Calvin waged relentless war. 
Luther and Calvin were not enemies to an Episcopacy, 
hut to the Imperial Episcopacy of the Popedom. They 
assented to the hierarchy of England, where bishops are 
scarcely more than Lord Lieutenants of counties, having 
less influence in the Church, than many of our State 
Governors in civil matters. The favorite theory along 
the banks of the Tiber undoubtedly is, that Christendom 
in the aggregate, as a Catholic whole, is not a republic, 
but an imperial monarchy. The so-styled Pope is the 
Emperor of this world-wide dominion, with supreme au- 
thority over all its interests, and over the very faith it 
should profess. By virtue of this authority he, in the 
year 1864, issued what he called a Syllabus of the errors 
floating over Christendom, endangering its peace, 
threatening its safety, and calling for summary correc- 
tion. The Syllabus not sufficing, he now calls a Coun- 
cil, ostensibly of universal Christendom, to aid him in 
his attempted regeneration of the times by arresting 
their progress, and throwing them back into the shapes 

full of curiosity. A high-churchman, said the rector, is one who 
holds the doctrines and usages of his Church in high estimation; 
and a low-churchman is one who holds them in low estimation. 
Good, said the warden. That is it, exactly. And his opinion was 
well worth the having. 


23 


and attitudes of tlie Middle Ages, wlien his predecessors 
came nearer a practical demonstration of Rome’s favorite 
theories, than they have since done, or than may ever be 
done again. To accomplish this formidable task, this 
most gigantic undertaking, he demands for himself the 
accordance of personal infallibility. Doubtless, this 
would cap the climax, alike of assumption and ambition, 
and render his task, so far as presumption could effect it, 
one of trifling cost and triumphant grandeur. 

But to say nothing of trouble at his own doors, within 
his own immediate household, the old theory of a Chris- 
tian Republic confronts him, on the threshold of his en- 
terprise, and contradicts him flatly, as to the postulates 
with which he starts* The successors of the departed 
Patriarchs of the East answer him, just as their forerun- 
ers would have done, that he is wrong, utterly, irredeem- 
ably wrong, in the very first step which he is taking. 
He is doing what he does (so they frankly tell him) as a 
dictator,. and not as a fellow-counsellor. It was his sim- 

*The idea of considering Christendom a great republic was not 
new even among Bomanists, three hundred years ago. Thus, the 
celebrated Abp. De Dominis, in his ponderous and profound trea- 
tise on Church Polity, boldly declared, in the tenth section of his 
conspectus, that the Church had ceased to be a church, under the 
Eoman Pontiff, and had become, under his temporal sway, a mere 
human government. 


24 


pie and liis bounden duty, to take counsel with his col- 
leagues in the Patriarchate — his co-equal representatives 
in the great Christian Republic — and act unitedly with 
them, in the consummation of such a most solemn, and 
solemnly momentous act, as that of calling a conclave, 
to affect religiously the terraqueous globe. This is, sub- 
stantially, what the Patriarch of Constantinople and the 
Patriarch of Alexandria answered his messengers, when 
they waited on them, and would fain have wheedled 
them into compliance with the wishes of their patron. 
They replied to the messages, with which they were 
accosted, with princely courtesy, but with princely inde- 
pendence. They would not so much as handle the docu- 
ments presented them, but returned them with the firm- 
ness of very autocrats. And so, doubtless, it has been, 
all over Oriental Christendom ; and would have been in 
England, and with ourselves, had we been approached 
with anything like apostolic charity, as if we had a place, 
however narrow, on the broad platform of the old Com- 
munion of Saints. Most unamiably, and unchristianly, 
not to say antichristianly, we are — though we profess 
the same creeds which the Orientals honor — we are de- 
nounced, and held aloof, as heretics. Not as schismatics 
—not as misbelievers— but as actual outsiders from the 
Christian pale— as huddled into the same hideous cate- 


25 


gory, with infidels of the darkest shapes and names.* 
And how is it possible to answer one, approaching us 
with such abhorrent names, such damning repudiation, 
hut by meeting the attack point-blank, and pronouncing 
our assailant an apostate ? I see not, even upon the 
basis of a canon of Pope Leo I., one of the tallest of his 
tribe, and who therefore is worth quoting, twice over. 
Leo’s canon, as given by Dr. Barrow, is in the following 
words : “ Whosoever doth effect more than his due doth 
lose that which properly belonged him.”f To call a 
man a schismatic, i.e., an errorist, about the Church’s 
discipline or polity, I hold to be a thing quite subordinate 
and tolerable. But to call him a heretic, is to say that 
he denies, denies fundamentally and hopelessly, the 
faith, the historic faith of Christianity — the faith recorded 
in the oldest creeds, and transmitted as a part and parcel 
of the Church’s actual identity. We can hold no parley 
with such calumniation, which strikes our very heads 
off ; and if we think as poorly of Rome, as she does of 

♦In the picture of a (so-called) Catholic Tree, Abp. Cranmer and 
his contemporaries are represented by dead and broken branches, 
in company with such atrocious wretches as Voltaire. A deadlier 
insult could not be perpetrated. And this for children to see, so 
that they may associate the names, and hate all alike 1 ! 

tBarrow’s Works. Hughes’s Edit. VH., p. 437 ; compare p. 351. 


26 


ourselves, slie may thank herself for the commencement 
of such sad aggression. 

You now see, my Brethren, how, on truly — not pre- 
sumptively — on genuinely catholic principles ; how, on 
the most ancient and best accredited rules of action, the 
Council lately convened at Rome has not the slightest 
title to the venerable appellation, Ecumenical. It is not 
Ecumenical, but sectional, partial, and exclusive. It is 
what canonists might call a synod, or a convocation. 
The Orientals had a gathering at Bethlehem, not many 
years subsequent to the final adjournment of the Romish 
gathering at Trent, in the Tyrol ; and they called it but 
a synod. And this is all the name which the present 
gathering at Rome deserves, canonically. For it ignores 
the East, it ignores a large portion of its own peculiar 
home, the West. It begins with an assumption, as false 
as it is audacious, that the Patriarchate of Rome is, ipso 
facto, and by its own self considered, the Church Catho- 
lic. It transforms — I might say transubstantiates — the 
old republics of Christendom into a monarchy — worse, 
into an imperial monarchy — worse still, into an inerring 
monarchy ; such as was aspired to by the Medes and 
Persians, some twenty-five hundred years gone by. There 
never was such a superhuman monarchy, entrusted to 
mortal hands. Satan, doubtless, when son of the morn 


27 


ing, in tlie purlieus of an unearthly throne, conceived of 
it, and clutched at it ; and his example is all which can 
he quoted, in the way of precedent. I say Satan’s is the only 
precedent ; for the moment Peter fancied himself a Pope, 
and said “Not so,” to his Master, as his successors have 
said to his Master’s kingdom, that very moment his 
Master likened him to the infernal Devil ! I seem, there- 
fore to have actual infallibility on my side, for the par- 
allel which has been indulged in. 

This lecture has already, perhaps, become too long ; 
though it would be easier to lengthen than to shorten it, 
and not to leave unsaid, and even unreferred to, many 
things which the theologian and the ecclesiastical histo- 
rian might deem worthy ample notice. There is, how- 
ever, one point more respecting Ecumenical Councils, on 
which it is important for me to comment, as well as upon 
their character as necessarily representative, and neces- 
sarily free. And this is their proper work, in relation to 
Doctrine and Discipline, the two most important parts of 
all genuine Religion. And here I must studiously con- 
tract my observations, and give the subject of Discipline 
the go-by. 

And now, in reference to the action of an Ecumenical 
Council as to Doctrine, it is hastily and perhaps igno- 


28 


rantly supposed, that such a Council may venture on the 
composition of a Creed, as a creation of its own prefer- 
ences and simple will. It can do no such thing. In fact, 
it can do nothing, finally. Its work aptly resembles the 
work of a Convention, delegated to frame organic law, 
or a civil constitution, which must he submitted to the 
people for their approval. If a Convention’s proposed 
and published work is accepted by the people generally, 
the Constitution which has been framed by it, stands, 
and becomes a permanency. The same is the case with 
the completed work of a Council, when that Council ad- 
journs without day, and spreads its records for the super- 
vision of the Christian public, that is, before Christen- 
dom, far and wide. That work must receive the general 
acceptance of Christendom ; or, as the old rule would 
construe it, must be owned and acknowledged by the 
five grand republics of the Christian world, the time- 
honored Patriarchates* It is on this ground, that the 
Nicene Creed, having been drawn up by two General 

* “ The claim of a Synod to the estimation of a General Council 
depends entirely upon the general or universal reception of its de- 
crees by the Catholic Church ; and that no council is to be account- 
ed general or universal, whose decrees are not generally or univer- 
sally received by the Catholic Church.”— Perceval on the Roman 
Schism, p. 17. So said Bossuet. See Palmer on the Church, 3d ed., 
ii. 113, 116. 


29 


Councils, and accepted by universal Christendom, or all 

* 

but universal Christendom, for 1500 years, stands on 
higher authority, as a communion creed for universal 
Christendom, than any other doctrinal formulary what- 
ever. As to the works of Councils, contemplated as a 
whole, the various views taken by different bodies of 
Christians, as to what should be received, and should re- 
main as Catholic, amid their accumulated labors, has 
caused the acceptance of Councils, in different portions 
of the community of Christians at large, to vary singu- 
larly and widely. The Roman Church, for example, ac- 
cepts some eighteen or nineteen ; receiving parts of 
some, and rejecting parts of others, with a freedom which 
smacks strongly of the wilfulness of the (so-called) right 
of private judgment. The Greek Church accepts seven 
Councils ; while we, if our Homilies may be taken as a 
criterion — the most learned of them is the one specially 
alluded to — accept six* 

So much for the inherent authority of a Council, by 
name and nature Ecumenical. Such a Council has no 

* The Homily on the Peril of Idolatry. In my edition of the 
Homilies, p. 182, Dr. Field, in his elaborate and profound work on 
the Church, speaks of six Councils universally accepted for the 
Faith, and seven for Faith and Manners. Vol. iv., p. 61 : Cam- 
bridge, 1852. 


30 


Ecumenical authority till it has been sanctioned, ratified, 

* 

and acceptably established ; any more than the provisions 
of the Convention of 1868 became a constitution, with- 
out the will, allowance, and consent of the people of 
New York. 

And, now, a word further as to the part taken by an 
Ecumenical Council, in the composition of a creed. 

It is simply and entirely ministerial ; that is, its ac- 
tion here is vicarious, as the minister or substitute for 
another. Human authority can make canons — that is, 
ecclesiastical statute-law, not contrary to the general or 
constitutional provisions of Holy Writ. But no one, 
whether man or angel, can make an article of faith, but 
the “Author and Finisher of our faith,” the Church’s 
only head, the Church’s only king. And the office of his 
Church, as vicariously his body on earth, is to attest, and 
preserve, and perpetuate this faith, as it was “ once de- 
livered to the saints ; ” and thus delivered to them, not 
as heirs of his original and sole authority, but simply as 
trustees and executors of his last Will and Testament, 
who, with their legitimate successors, are to keep it safe- 
ly, and hand it on unadulterated and uncontaminated, to 
the world’s last sundown. And when this faith, origin- 
ated by God’s own Son, and put in trust by God’s 
own Son, has been tampered with — doubted of, de- 


31 


nied, opposed, counterfeited, and counteracted — tlien 
it is the office and the duty of the Church, by and 
through her representatives, summoned in Council Ecu- 
menical, to turn to the records, reminders, and transmis- 
sions of the past, and ask what has come down to us, 
from the Fountain-Head, and come down unmixed and 
unimpeached. The Church here (to speak after the 
fashion of this world), simply follows out one of the 
great rules of interpretation, prevalent in our courts of 
law, about the exposition of ancient documents. “ Con- 
temporanea expositio est optima et fortissima in lege,” is 
the current maxim of the lawyer and the judge* It is 
the immemorial practice of the great assemblies of the 
Church. And their task, when labored out, goes back 
to their constituency for assent and consent ; and, if rati- 
fied, becomes Christendom’s living and incorporated 
voice. That voice is a creed ; and we believe a creed so 
constituted, identified, and ratified, because then it be- 
comes the voice of the Church Catholic, the voice of 
Christendom, the voice of Christianity ! And we hold 
up such creeds, as keys to the interpretation of the Bible, 
which no private interpretation may contravene. If 

* Contemporaneous exposition is the best and strongest, i. e ., 
most reliable, in law— From Broom’s Legal Maxims, 2d ed., p. 532. 
Jeremy Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium, Bk. III., ch. 6, §6. 


32 


Christianity could become incarnate, and could utter vo- 
cal sounds, they would be such as echo to us from the 
vistas of the past, in the articles of those time-honored 
epitomes called the Catholic Creeds.* And therefore we 
receive such creeds, as testimony and not as mere theo- 
logical opinions — as the solemn verdict of continuous 
history ; and not as efforts in metaphysics, like scores of 
systems and theories and confessions, which are incon- 
testably the works of individuals, or of sections of Chris- 
tendom. Not that I mean to slur or damnify such things. 
Not by any means ; for our Thirty Nine Articles belong 
to such a category. All I mean to contend for is, that 
such things, like our Articles, are (as they are, according 
to their own title,) articles of Religion, and not articles 
of the Catholic Faith ; and are binding not on the Church 
Catholic, in its character of a Communion of Saints, but 
on that part of it, which has incorporated them, into its 
standards of authority, interpretation, and peace.f 

* I do not think that we have bettered these Creeds, by begin- 
ning with “I believe,” instead of “ We believe as was undoubt- 
edly the old custom in the East. “ I believe ” seems a voice from 
the regions of private judgment. “ We believe,” seems a voice of the 
Communion of Saints. “ I believe,” also, is not in analogy with 
the Lord’s Prayer. Even in private, no one says, “ My Father who 
art in Heaven. 

t 1 use the phrase “Communion of Saints” in its historic, and 


33 


Pius IV. — wlio was pope between 1559 and 1565 — as 
the expounder of the decrees and canons of the Council 
of Trent, added twelve articles to the Nicene Creed, 
which consisted before of twelve articles only ; and pro- 
nounced the whole compendium, the “true Catholic 
Faith, without which no man can be saved.” He could 
have done nothing more fatal to the pretensions of that 
body, as an Ecumenical Council. Pius IX., in 1854, ad- 
ded a thirteenth article to this Faith — declaring the na- 
ture of the Blessed Virgin immaculate, in spite of her 
death, and of the inspired declaration that death is the 
wages of sin. He could have done nothing more fatal to 
his prerogatives, as an ecclesiastical patriarch. If, as 
one of his predecessors before quoted — and one of the 
proudest of them — hesitated not to say, when he wanted 
to tame another as proud as himself— if whoever doth 
affect more than his due, loses that which properly be- 

not in its theological sense. Originally, it was a protest against 
Schism ; and meant the Church in its concentration, while “ Catho- 
lic ’’meant the Church in its diffusion, or extension A Catholic 
Church might not be “ at unity with itself,” unless, while it could 
comprehend all men, it could also unite all men into a single whole, 
by intercommunion, Hence, the Church, while Catholic enough 
to cover the whole globe, must be a communion, i. e., intercom- 
munion of saints, in order to hold together, and be “one body in 



Christ.” 


34 


longed to liim ; then, in so doing, he deposed himself 
from the office which he usurped, and should have 
doomed himself, as a penance, to monastic seclusion and 
solitude. 

And, now, if Pius IX. and his collaborators presume 
to multiply the articles of a faith for Christendom, and 
propound their novelties as necessities for salvation — how 
— this is the grand practical conclusion to end with — 
how are we to treat them? We may treat them with 
the consideration bestowed upon similar declarations by 
a government which still calls its head, His Apostolic 
Majesty, and used to accord him the more Italian title, 
King of the Romans. A Papal allocution denounced 
certain of the late popular laws of Austria, as Godless, 
and devoid of obligation.* And how did Apostolic and 
Roman Austria welcome this impertinent interference 
with her sovereignty ? She stood self-centred, tranquil 
and serene ; and such soaring vociferation went by her, 
like the wail of the wind through the gorges of her 
mountains. Unquestionably if the cases had been re- 

\ 

*If the Pope can pronounce a law of Austria Godless and devoid 
of obligation, so he can any law of the United States. How then 
can a member of the Roman Church profess allegiance to our gov- 
ernment, without a mental reservation in the Pope’s behalf? Is 
such allegiance honest ? At any rate, is it reliable ? 

i 

> : 

* t'y 


35 


versed, if Austria had been as imbecile as the Pope was, 
and be as potential as the House of Hapsburg, bis decla- 
rations would have come with the point of the bayonet, 
and, amid the thunder of shotted cannon, and might 
have been submitted to in moody and scowling stillness. 
They amounted, actually, to scarce the whistle of that 
shepherd’s pipe, which we seem to hear when we think 
of Virgil’s Bucolics amid summer’s murmuring trees. 
They had not the respectable scream of a mortar’s shell. 

And so we may return to Borne the impeachment 
which she has so often flirted in the faces of those whom 
she stigmatizes as non-Catholics, and say that private 
interpretations are no^to be respected as oracles — private 
judgments by no means to be listened to as Imperial de- 
crees. We may say, and say with a self respect, as sus- 
taining as the verdict of an honest and an illuminated 
conscience, that the free declarations of Christendom, 
through her assembled and unshackled representatives, 
shall always be heard by us, with the profoundest defer- 
ence. And more. When those declarations are affirmed 
and consecrated, by the general consent of Christendom, 
we will embrace them (as we have done similar ones) 
with the homage of our hearts, and bow down to them 
with a reverential will. Such declarations will be to us, 


36 


tlie outspeakings of Christ’s kingdom, united, as of old, 
into a Communion of Saints. They will ring in our ears, 
like echoes from Christ’s own celestial throne. We will 
greet them, as the Blessed Virgin did an angel from the 
presence-chamber of Heaven ; and say, be it unto us ac- 
cording to their word ! 











































































































































































» 






















































* 





















































